Cedric Bixler-Zavala Says the Mars Volta ‘Will Be Back Soon’

The Mars Volta have been on hiatus for five years and counting, but according to singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, fans can start looking forward to new music from the band.

Bixler-Zavala made his surprise pronouncement via Twitter, responding to a fan's undimmed love of the band's music by thanking them for the "kind words" and then adding, "We will be back soon." Naturally, that set off a flurry of follow-up questions — and although Bixler-Zavala didn't have much to offer in terms of details, he did make it clear that while he's still focused on his current duties in At the Drive-In, he definitely sees a way forward to a Mars Volta reunion.

"I appreciate the rabid infection that spreads when anything Volta is discussed, but it’ll be a while b4 that ship takes off," he added in a follow-up tweet. "Still got a lot of ground to cover w my current family @AtTheDriveIn all I did was praise a fans enthusiasm & casually mention volta being a thing."

Even if "be back soon" turned out not to mean quite what fans might have hoped, even the possibility of a reunion represents a change of heart for Bixler-Zavala. Several years ago, he shut down the idea in no uncertain terms, telling fans it was "not gonna happen" and urging them to focus on the Mars Volta spinoff project Antemasque.

While a Mars Volta reunion looms in the middle distance, fans can look ahead to plenty of activity from Bixler-Zavala and his fellow Mars Volta co-founder Omar Rodríguez-López in At the Drive-In. The reunited band will spend much of 2018 on the road in support of their most recent release, the Diamante EP.